Tax Watch: Parking is big revenue for towns, but Bedford urged to give more fines

Feb. 14, 2013

The three cars from the right were parked on Parkway in Katonah for almost seven hours Feb. 7. Parking on the street is limited to four hours, but none of the cars had tickets. / Photos by David McKay Wilson/The Journal news

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Eddie Carrion, a server at Katonah Restaurant, says he parks often on Parkway. Sometimes a parking attendant marks his tire so he moves his car to avoid a ticket.

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In our car-centric suburbs, revenue from parking — and the fines levied against those who don’t follow the parking rules — provides an increasingly large piece of municipal revenues. It’s the kind of money that eases the reliance on property taxes, and comes from charging users of a public service.

White Plains is the region’s parking king, with revenue for 2013 projected at $22 million, 14 percent of the city budget. The parking income includes $7.4 million in fines paid by motorists whose time parking in city garages exceeds what they fed the meter or who gamble that they might be able to park on city streets overnight. More often than not, the city’s omnipresent parking enforcement team will leave a ticket on your windshield.

Croton-on-Hudson has developed its own gold mine at the Croton-Harmon Metro-North Railroad station, where parking revenue of $2.9 million makes up 17 percent of this year’s village budget.

Bedford does well on parking, too, with municipal lots in Bedford, Bedford Hills and Katonah serving both commuters and shoppers projected to bring in $930,000 this year.

But parking fines slumped in Bedford in 2012, with a reduction of 8 percent to $221,409. Software professional Steven Butera, who moved to Edgemont Street in August, finds that no surprise. Since he moved to Katonah, with its vibrant downtown and station on Metro-North’s Harlem Line, he has been troubled by the lack of enforcement on the streets by his home, where cars are limited to two- or four-hour stints.

“I walked downtown today, and the same cars were there all day,” he said by phone Wednesday. “The same Subaru Outbacks, a car from Connecticut, a few others. The town is losing money here.”

Butera had emailed Tax Watch a couple of weeks ago with his lament, so I stopped by his neighborhood at 9 a.m. Feb. 7 to check it out. That morning, 25 cars were parked on Edgemont Street and Parkway, just west of the cluster of shops and restaurants in downtown Katonah. I returned seven hours later to Butera’s neighborhood. Seven of the 25 cars were still there. None had tickets.

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Among them was a maroon Nissan Juke, with a 2013 sticker on its front windshield declaring the owner’s membership in the New York State Troopers PBA. The car belonged to Eddie Carrion, a server at Katonah Restaurant a block away.

Carrion, of Port Chester, said he left his car on Parkway because there was no other place for him to park in the downtown area. Carrion acknowledged he’d received a few $25 tickets over the years but hadn’t received one in a while. Employees at local stores check for chalk marks on their tires, and if they spot one, they’ll move their car before the four-hour limit expires.

“They didn’t mark the tires today,” Carrion said. “What are we supposed to do? There are no places for employees to park.”

Ten meters were available that morning in a lot at the Katonah train station that cost $6 a day, up 20 percent from $5 a day in 2012. But those are only available after 10 a.m., and thus no help to workers like Carrion who report to work to serve the breakfast crowd. Meanwhile, the metered spots were full at the Woodsbridge Road commuter lot a couple of blocks away while 70 spaces reserved for annual permit-holders remained vacant. Annual permits for out-of-town motorists cost $1,250 a year.

Since moving in, Butera has reached out to Bedford Supervisor Lee Roberts and Police Chief William Hayes to encourage town authorities to step up enforcement in Katonah. In a letter to Roberts, he said that the parking attendants could make their salaries – and more – if they wrote more tickets. His visitors also would be able to find a spot to park by his new home.

“As a commuter myself, who paid the fee for the lots myself for years, it’s just not right that people think they are better than us and ignore the parking ordinances,” he wrote.

Personnel issues, however, have stymied Bedford’s parking enforcement efforts. The town has just one parking enforcement officer, and Hayes said he has been out with a long-term illness for several months. Meanwhile, Hayes says his short-staffed police, which lost six officers to retirement in December, have been stretched thin by “community demands to increase police presence at schools.”

Roberts told Butera that the town had hired a new parking attendant, but that part-timer broke his ankle, which limited his mobility along the streets.

“We have a 40-square-mile town and three hamlets,” Roberts said. “We’re working to get full staffing. We know it has been annoying to residents.”